Artist: Oldfield, Mike
Label: Virgin Records
Released: 1973
Length: 48:50
Rating: 4.5/5
This album kicked off Mike Oldfield’s musical career. After his debut sold like crazy, his life changed completely. A young guy who had spent quite some time creating the now-famous Tubular Bells became a superstar overnight. Tubular Bells stayed at number one on the UK charts for weeks, and the number of copies sold is unbelievable for a prog album (several million). It’s even more remarkable when you consider that the music was written by a seventeen-year-old, inexperienced musician. Sure, the music has its flaws, but that’s probably true of most debuts.
Just looking at the cover can take your breath away when you see how many instruments this shy English multi-instrumentalist plays. And it’s not just that he plays all of them — he’s a master of almost every one, as he already shows on this album.
The first part kicks off with the famous piece from the film “The Exorcist”. Around the middle, the song hits its peak. Some of the melodies are really beautiful, and the songwriting and arrangement are remarkably mature for a kid that age. In places, though, the themes are stretched out a bit too long. That’s the album’s main problem. The other is that Oldfield’s playing can get a little wild at times. Now and then he just charges off into a solo for no reason. You could blame it on inexperience or simply youthful enthusiasm. After listening to the album a few more times, his wild solos bothered me less and less, because his exuberance pulls you along. You won’t find this youthful craziness on his later albums (especially Ommadawn), which is both good and bad. Good, because he focused more on composition; bad, because you can tell he lost that youthful enthusiasm and innocence that the music industry takes away from many talented musicians. The last section is the most annoying thing on the whole album, as more or less the same melody plays for eight minutes while he introduces every instrument on the record.
The second part is more my thing. Oldfield doesn’t linger too long on a single melody, and the melodies themselves are better worked out than in the first part. The only annoying thing about this track is the section Oldfield calls “Caveman”. That segment has an irritating caveman grunting that spoils a really good melody hiding underneath all the growling. In this part Oldfield pretty successfully blends various influences into melodies that follow one another in quick succession. His take on “Sailor’s Hornpipe” at the end is also interesting, showing that he’s undoubtedly among the best guitarists in the business. For those who might not know folk music, that’s the song from the Popeye cartoon (not “Popeye The Sailor Man”).
The album has been reworked several times (Tubular Bells 2, 3, 2003), but none of them conjures up the atmosphere of the original. The original has a certain innocence and playfulness in its melodies and composing style that’s simply endearing. It also seems a bit silly to me to rework one album so many times, as if Oldfield didn’t have enough new ideas and would rather lean on old glory and old concepts.
It seems incredible to me that such an album did so well on the charts. If you tried to sell a CD with just two tracks of more than twenty minutes each today, sales would probably be dismal. But in the seventies things were different. Some labels even encouraged experimentation. If bands like Emerson, Lake and Palmer and Yes could sell millions of copies, why couldn’t a newcomer with his own distinctive style, combining rock, folk, jazz, classical and many other styles, do the same?
Tubular Bells is an album Mike Oldfield wrote while shut away in his room, waiting for his mother’s episodes to pass. His mother had a psychological imbalance, and when you add alcoholism on top of that, it’s clear Oldfield had a pretty rough childhood. Music helped him get over all those traumas. It’s no wonder there are quite a few angry moments in Tubular Bells. While he was composing, he developed an idealistic attitude toward music, but after the promotional concert it all went to hell. He even told Virgin Records owner Richard Branson that it felt like he’d lost a part of himself.
One of the best debuts ever.
Lineup
– Mike Oldfield: guitars, keyboards, basses, percussion, vocals
GUEST MUSICIANS:
– Steve Broughton: drums
– Lindsay Cooper: bass
– Mundy Ellis: choir
– John Field: flutes
– Sally Oldfield: choir
– Vivian Stanshall: instrument introductions
– Manor Choir: (2)
– Nasal Chorus: (1)
Production
MikeOldfield, Simon Heyworth
Track List
1. Tubular Bells 1 25:00
2. Tubular Bells 2 23:50
